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How to get light tender crumb in sourdough

March 15, 2011 - 7:50pm

GSnyde

How to get light tender crumb in sourdough

I like my sourdough pretty well, but the crumb is usually heavier and more chewy than some of the sourdoughs from top local bakeries (Acme, for instance). Today I had some excellent sourdough in a restaurant. It had a nice chewy crust, but a very airy, tender melt-in-your-mouth crumb. I'd love to be able to replicate that texture.

I use a fairly low protein white flour (11.5%) and about 15% whole grain. I usually follow a process and formula similar to that of Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough. I mix by hand. Any tips to getting a lighter crumb?

I was making bread with 60% to 80% whole wheat flour, so I had not expected the crumb to be as open as it would be with white. But it was certainly softer. And more importantly, there was no loss of flavour.

i find that lower hydration SD breads like the Vermont SD or PR's San Francisco sourdough are pretty chewy. On the other hand, those with higher hydration like the SFBI miche or the Tartine Basic Country Loaf, while chewy when first cooled, have a more tender crumb the next day.

If you don't want to work with higher hydration, you could always sub some milk for some of the water.

I never use flour lower than 11.7% protein for bread. However, gentler mixing might result in a more tender crumb. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. You are hand mixing, and it's hard to over-develop the dough that way. You do need to develop the gluten enough to contain the air cells.

When I started making SD bread, I mixed with my KitchenAid. I believe I tended to under mix, following PR's mixing time recommendations. My crumb tended to be dense and doughy.

I really think your answer is either higher hydration or adding an enrichment - specifically milk - that tenderizes the crumb. Alternatives would be to add fat - butter or olive oil - in small amounts. Another tenderizer is mashed potatoes. They, in effect, lower the gluten and raise the hydration of the dough.

I agree with David. Hamelman's book is my all-time favorite, but like you I have always wanted to achieve a softer crumb than I was getting with the Vermont Sourdough and variations. I recently got the Tartine Bread book and the basic country loaf recipe has given me my best sourdough ever. It is a higher hydration loaf than most, and it is likely that this is helping with the tender crumb.

The tenderest, airiest crumb I've ever achieved is with txfarmer's asian fruited barm loaf. It was a pretty wet, silky dough. It has butter in it for tenderness, but the lightness is mostly due to mixing until a very thin windowpane is achieved. The degree of development right before incorporating the butter was about where I usually stop for my sourdough loaves.

The kneading allowed the bread to triple, almost quadruple in size without collapsing in the oven, and resulted in a very light texture.

I have found that hand working a sourdough more intensively can help crumb development, even when the formula remains 'lean'.

What prompted me to try this was hearing Jeffrey Hamelman on video stating that a dough taken to 'medium development' by machine would have had around 900 turns in tbe bowl. Conversations with Andy have also led to an interest in more intensive hand mixing.

For doughs with higher gluten development, I, like yy, have learnt an enormous amount from tx farmer's posts.

Hi Glen, I don't have any experience baking sourdough bread, but quite a lot of experience eating it. Just wondering if the commercial bakery setting with their excellent steam injected oven might have a lot to do with a lighter crumb, with the early expansion thing going on. Mabey a tender crumb would also result. Ray

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